vince of Pennsylvania in the year 1729. There emigrated from Europe to Pennsylvania in that year no fewer than 6208 persons, of whom, as in the emigration of the present day, the great mass were Irish, driven from their native land, the account states, "by reason of rack-rents there"—in other words, by the same scarcity and high price of land, and utter want of any other means of subsistence, which still constitute the unhappy economical condition of that country. Of the 6208 individuals, 243 were Germans from the Palatinate, 267 English and Welsh, 43 Scotch, and the remaining 5655 all, or mostly all, Irish. The Germans were all passengers, the Scotch all servants, the English, Welsh, and Irish, partly passengers, partly servants. By this time, "in the province of Pennsylvania," says Anderson, "great improvements were constantly making in commerce, shipping, and agriculture; many ships and sloops were continually building at Philadelphia, Newcastle, &c., which they mostly dispose of to our sugar colonies, and the rest they use in the carrying their own product, consisting of cask-staves, lumber, pork, pease, flour, biscuit, &c., in exchange for sugar, rum, molasses, and British money."[1] As yet, however, as we learn from a report of the Board of Trade which was drawn up on an order of the House of Commons in 1732, there were no manufactures of any consequence established in Pennsylvania; even the clothing of the people and the utensils for their houses were all imported from Great Britain. The case was nearly the same, according to the report, in New Hampshire, New York, and New Jersey. The inhabitants only made a few coarse linens and woollens for their own use, and even of these a less quantity than they used to do. In Massachusett's Bay, however, industry had made somewhat greater progress. There they not only built ships for the French and Spaniards, as the Pennsylvanians did for their neighbours of the West India Islands, but they had already in that and other New England States six furnaces and nineteen forges for the smelting of
- ↑ Chron. of Com., iii. 155
